While the City of Fort Wayne faces delays in getting approval for its proposed homeless resource center in downtown, the homelessness problem isn’t going away.
The homelessness crisis
Before the city had a Manager of Homeless Services and before Mayor Sharon Tucker took office, Fort Wayne was already searching for ways to address and serve the homeless population.
In 2023, the city created the Everybody Home plan. Alongside service providers and national non-profit consultants, the plan looked to better understand the crisis to prevent and end homelessness.
Speaking to city council last September, Fort Wayne’s Manager of Homeless Services, Amanda Fall, credited this program with paving the way for her.
“The work being done from the plan the last two years laid a solid foundation for my position," she said.
In an executive summary released as part of that plan, it found that less than eight percent of rental housing is affordable to households at risk of homelessness and only 31 units of Permanent Supportive Housing were available in Allen County in 2021.
From 2018 to 2021, the organization found just over 1,000 individuals in Fort Wayne were “literally homeless,” a Housing and Urban Development term to mean lacking a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.
And the problem has only gotten worse since then.
A study released by the National Alliance to End Homelessness in 2025 found homeless counts at a record high nationally. In 2024, nine out of every 10,000 residents of Indiana experienced homelessness and more than 6,000 people didn’t have a permanent place to live, a five percent increase from 2023.
When Fall spoke in front of City Council last September, it was following a small back-and-forth between council members and city administration about whether the city was doing enough to address homelessness.
In July of last year, Fall said she partnered with 20 agencies over a two-week period to get a more accurate count of the unhoused in Fort Wayne.
“Don’t get lost in the numbers," Fall said. "Each number represents a human – somebody's daughter, somebody’s son – and it’s real easy to forget about that when we’re looking at numbers.”
What they found; 253 individuals living unsheltered, 40 households living in hotels and 47 households living in vehicles. At the same time, Fall said there were 462 individuals living in shelters.
“We also know that about 50% of the people asked would not give data," Fall said. "So, we know that these numbers are low and can easily be doubled.”
In May of 2025, Fort Wayne Community Schools reported having more than 1,000 households living doubled up.
"Those families you’re never gonna see in any Point In Time count. HUD doesn’t consider those families to be homeless," Fall said. "But if I’m living with my sister and I have two school-aged children, those children deserve their own home and so they deserve to be counted in this count.”
Councilman Thomas Freistroffer complimented Fall’s presentation in September.
"I haven’t seen this type of discussion on homelessness in the last 12 to 15 years on council," he said.
He was also concerned about the number of individuals being dropped off in Fort Wayne, which Fall said was common in larger cities in the state where services were offered, such as Bloomington and South Bend, but that moratoriums on serving those from other communities have failed.
Still, earlier this year, the mayor’s office and city council came together on an ordinance prohibiting transient homeless individuals from being relocated to Fort Wayne, unless a local service provider has agreed to accept them.
Andrew Downs, Tucker’s Chief of Staff, addressed city council before the ordinance was passed, explaining this was a small step in the city’s ongoing effort to address homelessness.
“It’s really not compassionate to drop somebody off in a city of 260,000 people with no one they know and no idea how to navigate the system," he said.
Those caught transporting individuals into Fort Wayne without a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence could face a fine of $2,500 per individual.
Recently, WANE 15 also reported that cease-and-desist letters were sent from the Fort Wayne city attorneys dated May and June to a mental health facility in Indianapolis that had dropped three individuals off at the Rescue Mission.
In June, the City of Fort Wayne presented a proposal for a 24-7 homeless services center in downtown to City Council.
The Anchor Resource Center
Homelessness is at a record high nationally, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, with more than 6,000 people in Indiana without a permanent place to live in 2024.
“Something needs to be done," Mayor Sharon Tucker told city council in June.
In Fort Wayne, the city estimated nearly 600 individuals were sleeping outside, in hotels or in vehicles in 2025, with shelters at or near capacity. Those numbers come from Amanda Fall, the manager of homeless services for the city.
“Our shelters that serve women and families are 100% full every single day of the year," she said.
Her position was created early last year under Tucker in response to a visible rise in homelessness in Fort Wayne.
Actually tracking the homeless comes with its own crop of problems. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, it can be difficult to track people living in cars, abandoned buildings and other deserted places. Other people may be easy to see but lack identification or don’t feel comfortable being identified.
Fall said she spent several weeks last July working with multiple organizations to visit encampments in the city, build trust and create a more accurate count of homelessness. Even still, she told City Council in September about 50% of the people they spoke to didn’t want to give data.
“Homelessness has been in our conversation so much more this past year," Fall said. "It’s because we are focused on finding solutions that work in our community.”
The biggest of those solutions is the Anchor Resource Center.
The proposed resource center would be a space for people to come inside, get shelter from the weather, use the bathroom, shower and do laundry. But, most importantly, it would be a hub to connect people without permanent housing to resources to help get them back on their feet.
The resource center would be a low-barrier entry space, which means it's not required for someone to be completely sober from drugs or alcohol in order to enter. But, Fall emphasised this doesn’t mean there are no rules at all.
“Low-barrier works with high accountability," she said. "So, there will be a code of conduct showing exactly what is expected of each and every individual that accesses services there.”
While someone won’t be turned away for having drugs or alcohol in their system, they won’t be allowed to have substances or weapons anywhere on the property. This gives them the opportunity to get people who are struggling with addiction into a conversation and offer resources not just for housing, but also for rehabilitation.
Fall said one of the biggest priorities for them was for the center to have expansive hours.
"We didn’t think a day shelter was enough," she said. "Because homelessness is 24-7. It’s not just Monday through Friday, nine to five.”
She said being a 24-7 facility also cuts down on people needing to linger outside the building, waiting to get in or sleeping on the sidewalk, because they can come in at any hour to escape the weather or find respite.
While the resource center plan has been designed with the option to expand to offer permanent beds down the line, initially it would only include emergency beds.
It also would offer another thing nowhere else in Fort Wayne is currently offering; Safe parking, where people can come and park their cars over night for a specific number of hours, and also come in and have access to the other things the resource center provides.
In September, Fall told City Council they had identified 47 households living in cars.
“You’re able to lock the doors, be in a safe space by yourself and you’re able to have your possessions in there with you," she said.
Tucker outlined the work that went into creating this proposal in front of City Council. She said it included hiring Fall, but also seeking out conversations with other communities – such as Hawaii and Arkansas – that have implemented similar programs to see what worked and what didn’t.
Notably, Tucker also said they visited the Lafayette LTHC, formerly Lafayette Transitional Housing Center, which caused a stir about some of the problems that facility is facing.
“There are some challenges there," Tucker said. "And those are not the challenges that we brought forward with us, we brought the best of the program.”
Presenting on the financing structure of the proposal, Tucker also said she asked at each place how they were funding their programs and each one said it was coming from general funds.
Here, the administration is only asking City Council for funds to purchase and renovate a building downtown, with operational funding coming from grants to cover the first three years.
The location
In early June, Fort Wayne City Council opened their regular meeting up to public comment. They then heard nearly two and a half hours of testimony from residents on the proposed Anchor Resource Center.
While council heard from a number of individuals both for and against the proposal, a main driver of the opposition is about the location; 333 E. Washington Blvd.
Third grade teacher at St. Paul’s Lutheran School Kristin Hoem spoke in front of City Council, on behalf of her husband Administrative Pastor Joe Hoem. She told council she and her husband support the mission of the center.
“We believe Fort Wayne must do more for the people experiencing homelessness," Hoem said. "Our concern is the location.”
The proposed location is about 800 feet from the school.
Several other staff members also spoke that night, with a focus on the location being wrong due to the way students use the entirety of downtown as an “extended classroom.”
Peter Scaer, a resident from the North side of the city and former parent at St. Paul’s spoke about other concerns.
“I speak of Zachary offenders, those who pose the greatest threat especially to children," he said.
He’s referencing a law that requires registration of convicted sex offenders and details the responsibilities of law enforcement agencies, as well as responsibilities of the offender, according to the Allen County Sheriff’s Department website.
In an address to City Council two weeks later, Mayor Sharon Tucker responded to this specific concern. She said she reached out to the Fort Wayne Police Department for a report on crimes against minors within a one-mile radius of the proposed location for the past three and a half years.
The findings she presented were five crimes against minors which all took place in the residential areas and none of them by a homeless individual.
“There is a perception, but there is no factual evidence to support that having a resource center, and/or the Rescue Mission for that matter, within 1000 feet of a school has created danger to our children," Tucker said.
The location being proposed was chosen in part due to its proximity to the Rescue Mission, which is just down the block, as well as other resources in the area for shelter, food and healthcare.
But there was more to it, as well. Tucker’s Chief of Staff Andrew Downs explains some of the other criteria used to decide what location would work the best; non-residential, walkable or accessible by bus, space for an outdoor courtyard and enough parking.
Downs said there have been suggestions to get the center out of downtown and over by the new jail or the airport.
"When you start looking around, almost nobody lives on a bus line, almost nothing is on a bus line," he said. "So, the question is how far do you have to walk to get to a bus line?”
The goal of putting the center downtown is to meet people where they are.
The city solicited feedback from the community through a form on its website that was open for two weeks, with the promise of publishing and responding to each question or comment it received on the proposal. Several of those comments suggested other locations, such as the jail – which the city doesn’t own – or another property the city does already own.
Downs explained the problem with one such property being suggested, which currently houses city vehicles and doesn’t have a building on the property.
“We will have to build the building," he said. "And you’re probably looking into the $10 million range for the size of building that we’re talking about.”
While there has been a loud pushback against the project, there are many who also support it, even in its current location. Ahead of the city council meetings, nine organizations with presences downtown wrote letters in support of the proposal and more than half of those who spoke at both city council meetings spoke in favor.
In the final part of this series, we’ll look at how Fort Wayne City Council has responded to the proposal and how it has increased some tensions between that body and City Hall.
A split at city council
Last month, the Fort Wayne City Council voted to hold on deciding whether to grant funding to the Anchor Resource Center until September.
A visibly frustrated Mayor Sharon Tucker took a moment to offer a final comment to council following the vote.
“I again ask you to grow the courage because while we hold this in an opportunity to look for more locations, you, too, will see that the problem will not go away," she said.
The public struggle between City Hall and council over homelessness began a year ago, when Republican council members Russ Jehl and Dr. Scott Myers wrote a letter to the city attorney accusing the city of doing “the minimum” to address homeless encampments downtown.
After a brief written back-and-forth, homeless services manager Amanda Fall attended a council meeting in September to give a presentation on the city’s ongoing strategy.
"So, one of the first things I did when starting was I developed the encampment taskforce," Fall said.
She said something she quickly realized was several city departments touched encampments but weren’t coordinating. There were also several service providers conducting outreach and not sharing information or strategies.
"This is bringing together enforcement and services for the first time so that they can talk together, figure out how we can collaborate and how they can learn from each other," Fall said.
Less than a year after that presentation, Fall returned to City Council alongside Tucker to request financing for the Anchor Resource Center, the next step in the city’s plan to address the crisis.
Despite much of the proposal receiving praise from council members, one particular issue brought the presentations to a halt. Here’s councilman Thomas Freistroffer.
“I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said," he said. "The only thing I have a problem with is the location.”
Notably, it’s across the street from the Rescue Mission, on the other side of the block from a soup kitchen and the current Matthew 25 health care building. It’s an area where many homeless people already seek shelter, come to get food and access resources.
Tucker responded to Freistroffer, saying homeless individuals are already in those spaces.
“It’s not a new challenge, it is currently in the area now," she said. "Thus, the reason the location was chosen.”
Ultimately, councilman Nathan Hartman suggested the hold, with a list of items he’d like to see the city provide before they can approve funding. They include an open forum community meeting; the administration engage a real estate professional; and public operation, security and good neighbor plans.
Councilwoman Michelle Chambers pushed back against this request at the meeting.
“You’re asking for things that have been already spoken to," she said. "You’re asking for things that are in motion already.”
Chambers said two mayoral administrations have been working on finding a solution to the homelessness crisis in Fort Wayne.
“I feel like we’re probably 10 years behind the marker on getting this done," she said.
Jehl and Myers seemed to agree with that sentiment in their letter last year, suggesting the city was “way behind” in addressing the issue. But, Hartman felt the city was rushing this proposal.
“One thing that we’ve heard over and over tonight is the need to do something and I personally would like to give more time," he said.
Chambers disagrees. She cited record heatwaves in recent weeks as more reason to be getting a plan in place.
“We should be in motion," she said. "Designing the building, getting all the things in place, so we, as early as possible, can have this low-barrier resource center open to be able to provide services.”
The vote to hold on the proposal ultimately fell down party lines, 5-3, with the democrats voting against the hold and republicans voting for. The council plans to revisit it in September, though Tucker has requested they move it up to Aug. 11.
This week, the mayor’s office released a full breakdown of the other properties it looked at before choosing the East Washington location.
